The madness, excitement, adventure and musings of a runner who can't get enough of it

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Sunday, June 30, 2013

2013 Bike MS: Harmon's Best Dam Bike Ride - 100 Mile Ride

We did it! My first century ride (and maybe eighth or ninth for Geof) is now in the books.

Survey says?

THAT WAS FUN!

Since this here is a running blog, I'll keep it short. But f'real, it was serious fun. Our longest training ride to date was a 20 miler over a month ago, and I at least was riding to/from work for a few weeks (12 miles roundtrip), but Geof wasn't riding at all. This was old hat for him, though. I don't think he was too concerned ;) So we weren't sure what to expect from the ride. But we did expect to finish, because that is what we set out to do. It was all new terrain for me, and I loved it.

At the start...we had 40 minutes to kill, waiting for all the waves ahead of us to go (3,000+ riders!)

Yeah, Team Wells Fargo! :)

Some lessons/thoughts on the day:

Chamois Cream

"You want me to put that stuff...where?" "Just squirt it all over your shorts." Ummmmmm, what? Talk about feeling like you've had a Serious Case of the Runs in your bike shorts... And thank goodness! I've never used the stuff, but boy am I glad to have had it! Thanks to lube, I have zero saddle sores or anything of the like. I was having mid-ride terrors imagining what those look like. So I did something right :)

Drinking on the Ride
Not happening. I could get the bottle out of the rack and take a sip, but I could not get it back into the rack. I had to stop in order to do so. Thus, I waited to drink until we reached aid stations (~10-12 miles apart) :) New goal: learn to drink on the ride successfully.

Downhill Riding
Like a boss. It meant I could stand on my pedals and give my arse a break.

Uphill Riding
Like a boss...eventually. Took me a few hills to find a strategy that worked best for me.

Spandex
It's just not for everyone. Someone forgot to mention that to about 75% of the field yesterday. But gotta love 'em for not caring! ;)

RecoFit ArmCoolers
Thank you for existing RecoFit. I wore the ArmCoolers the entire day and never felt hot or uncomfortable in them (temps reached the upper 90s). Nor did I need to worry about sunburn or sunscreen on my arms. Woot!

This is pretty much what the day looked like for us...mountains, country roads, rolling farmland, cloud cover. It was fantastic.

Free slushies for finishers!

A major THANK YOU to everyone who donated on my behalf! You all are amazing individuals and I appreciate your donations very, very much. The National MS Society thanks you as well! I thought of each of you during the ride yesterday :) And I thought about how much easier it was to ride 100 miles than to live with MS, that I had no excuse to complain about anything. And I thought about Ian's mom, my mom's old friend, Lauri, Martha's brother, and a couple patients I work with, among others.

This was a great, well organized event, and I felt very safe and cared for out there. I will certainly do another century ride. It is a totally fun and challenging change of pace for this here ultrarunner...and I sure do love seeing my husband in bike shorts, oooolala!!